Trying to make sense of my World. I write about digital transformation, purpose and culture change for better business.

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We’re very fond of happiness here at NM Towers – we measure it with tennis balls & buckets every day, we talk about it at the beginning of every meeting &, more importantly, we act on it when we’re not happy.

We recognise that happiness is the key to a passionate and motivated workforce.

That’s why, as part of our annual Meaning Conference this year, we’ve invited good friend & Chief Happiness Officer (my favourite job title of all time!), Alexander Kjerulf, to facilitate a workshop – to help others create a happier and more productive workplace.

Here’s Alexander at last year’s conference on the subject, which got us all off our seats:

“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”

Don’t get me wrong, we are getting better. But I’m still deeply disappointed when I hear of family members who have been in a professional job for years, climbed the ladder and are earning a few buck, but still don’t feel appreciated for their long-term loyalty. It bugs me that they aren’t praised or acknowledged and aren’t made to feel worthy or valued at work.

And it aggravates me when I hear friends talk about some great ideas they’ve had about their own companies, who have been made to feel inadequate by their leaders and are silenced by their inability to speak freely at work, to share their ideas and to help change the company for the better.

I would probably be the same. I’d probably think it was completely normal to enter the company at the bottom and have to work my way to the top in order to interject any opinion. And for a while, even here, I felt inadequate, like my opinion wasn’t justified. That’s just how it is, right?

When I started out here, I wondered what right I had, as a newcomer and a junior, straight out from university, to have a say in the way the business ran. Surely everyone knew better than me – right? Yet, I started noticing that my views were taken seriously and it was for the benefit of the company that I was able to spot opportunities for improvement. After all, who’s more qualified to do this – the people at the top who are in the thick of the decision making and are being pulled and stretched in all different directions, or those who are actually on the ground doing the work and experiencing the way said company is run?

And it’s not just about this, but it definitely feels like a massive part to me. It’s about being made to feel valued and being treated as a human being.

“We have entered a new age of fulfillment, in which the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning.”

Let’s grasp this opportunity.

Not just because it benefits us as individuals, but because it will unleash the potential of employees and have a tremendous impact on the way the business runs.

The French writer François-René de Chateaubriand hit the nail on the head when he wrote this:

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”